If we really want to figure which instances to suggest, it could maybe be good to have some additional statistics tracked per instance, and compare to the global averages. It might even be able to influence default choices for like the join-lemmy website.
I understand this might sound gross, but maybe there’s a good idea in here?
- user retention (percentage of users that are still active after 6 months? 1 month?)
- percentage of anonymous visits that result in a signup (ignore those that result in a login)
- ban rate
- signup acceptance/rejection speed
- percentage of accepted signups vs failed/declined (maybe this just promotes accepting spammers)
- average time spent on signup page
- bounce rate of signup page (opened but never completed)
Only instance I think you’d find such things is Threads and only if you work there. Also, it sounds rather telescreen-ish, so I would think this depth of info can’t be found here.
Personally, I’d recommend based on features, the instance’s scope, monthly active users (that is usually tracked by fediverse database sites), and the experiences with a given instance’s community.